RWE has dominant position in Germany's power market – competition authority

German energy company RWE has a dominant position among the country’s electricity suppliers, the country's competition authority said in its report on last year’s power market. An increase of electricity demand, low renewables feed-in and shutdowns under the country’s coal exit plan “made the power plant fleets of the electricity supplier RWE, which remains the largest supplier, indispensable for meeting the electricity demand in a significantly higher number of hours” throughout 2021, said Federal Cartel Office's president, Andreas Mundt. “According to our investigations, RWE is therefore  above the threshold for a dominant market position.” RWE is currently the only power company which clearly exceeds the threshold for the presumption of market dominance applied by the competition authority. However, the organisation said the importance of the remaining power plant capacities of all major German electricity producers for meeting demand is likely to increase in the future due to the “reduction of capacity and the resulting market shortage”.

RWE is one of Germany’s former “big four” power suppliers (with EnBW, E.ON and Vattenfall) and has taken on the challenge to transform its business towards renewables generation as part of the energy transition. A group of local utilities in Germany last year launched legal action against a landmark deal between RWE and energy companies E.ON, which they say amounts to market distortion.